NYPD Spied Broadly Before G.O.P. Convention

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By JIM DWYER

For at least a year before the 2004 Republican National Convention, teams of undercover New York City police officers traveled to cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews.

From Albuquerque to Montreal, San Francisco to Miami, undercover New York police officers attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists, the records show.

They made friends, shared meals, swapped e-mail messages and then filed daily reports with the department’s Intelligence Division. Other investigators mined Internet sites and chat rooms.

From these operations, run by the department’s “R.N.C. Intelligence Squad,” the police identified a handful of groups and individuals who expressed interest in creating havoc during the convention, as well as some who used Web sites to urge or predict violence.

www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/nyregion/25infiltrate.html?ei=5065&en=bd8e0dbbd9a8ffdb&ex=1175400000&partner=MYWAY

[Felix]

Dayum.

Glancing at the subject header, I thought the NYPD was covertly surveiling "broads," maybe for a "Broads of the NYPD" feature in some magazine or another.

Keeping an eye on protesters. How dull.

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Keeping an eye on protesters. How dull.

All in a days work, I guess!

[Felix]

Well, now that I have actually read the article and have taken off my funny-haha hat, this is a very interesting story. The NYPD was intensively involved in looking into lots of groups across the country for the year or so before the 2004 Rebublican convention.

A few of these people had potential as possibly violent demonstrators. Most did not. I the wake of the assaults on September 11, 2001, it is hard not to support more exhaustive intelligence work on the part of police agencies at several levels. I do wonder at the duplication of effort considering that the Department of Homeland Security was in operation by the time the convention was held. Competing intelligence operations that did not share data hampered the efforts to predict the sort of massive, long-in-preparation attack that actually occured on 9/11.

I see that only the "broad outlines" of the NYPD efforts have been revealed so far, mostly due to lawsuits spawned by the arrest of 1,806 people during the convention week. Stay tuned.